Confronting the
Bible’s Ethnic Cleansing
In Palestine

By Michael Prior,
C.M.

[The
material that follows is taken from the December, 2000, issue of The
Link, which is published by Americans for Middle East Understanding.
It may be reprinted in part or in full without prior permission, but
those who do so should send a copy of the extracted material to:
AMEU, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 245, New York, NY 10115-0245.]

About This
Issue

Is
Yahweh the Great Ethnic-Cleanser?Did He not instruct the Israelites to rid their PromisedLand of its indigenous people?

Few
biblical scholars want to wrestle with these questions.Rev. Michael Prior needs to wrestle with them.He’s been to today’s Holy Land and has seen today’s
variation on biblically sanctioned genocide.

Dr.
Prior is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of
Surrey, England, and visiting professor in Bethlehem University,
Palestine.He is a biblical scholar and author of “Zionism and the
State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry” and “The Bible and
Colonialism: A Moral Critique.”

John
F. Mahoney

Executive
Director, AMEU

It is mid-October 2000; to
date, at least 98 Palestinians and 7 Jews have been killed, and over
3,000, mostly Palestinians, injured in the Holy Land’s most recent
unholiness. That’s the math of it.

It is, however, the morality of itthat has engaged me over the past quarter of a century.

I would have been spared
some pain had I not undertaken significant portions of my postgraduate
biblical studies in the land of the Bible.And although the focus of my engagement was “the biblical
past,”I could not avoid
the modern social context of theregion.As a
result, my studying the Biblein
the Land of the Bible provoked perspectives that scarcely would have
arisen elsewhere.

For me, as a boy and young
man, politics began and ended in Ireland, an Ireland obsessed with
England. It was much later that I recognized that the history I
absorbed so readily in school was one fabricated by the nationalist
historiographers of a newly independent Ireland, who refracted the
totality of its history through the lens of 19th-century European
nationalisms. Although my Catholic culture also cherished Saint
Patrick and the saints and scholars after him, the real heroes of
Ireland's history were those who challenged British colonialism in
Ireland. I had no interest in the politics of any other region —
except that I knew that Communism, wherever, was wrong. Anyhow, the
priesthood beckoned.

My seminary courses on the
Old Testament first sensitized me to the social and political context
of theological reflection. We inquired into the real-life situations
of the prophets, and considered the contexts of the Wisdom Literature.
Beyond the narratives of Genesis 1-11 and Exodus, however, I do not
recall much engagement with the Torah.The atrocities recorded in the Book of Joshua made no
particular impression on me. The monarchy period got a generous
airing, noting the link between religious perspectives and changing
political circumstances.But
just as I was not sensitive at that stage to the fact that Irish
nationalist historiography had imposed a rigid nationalist framework
on everything that preceded the advent of interest in the nation
state, it never crossed my mind that the biblical narrative also might
be a fabrication of a past, reflecting the distinctive perspective of
its later authors.

Prior
to the 5-10 June 1967 war,I
had no particular interest in the State of Israel, other than anadmiration for Jews having constructed a nation state and
restored a national language. In addition to stimulating my first
curiosity in the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israel's conquest of the West
Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and Sinai brought me “face
to face,” via TV, with wider, international political realities. The
startling, speedy, and comprehensive victory of diminutive Israel over
its rapacious Arab predators produced surges of delight in me. And I
had no reason to question the mellifluous mendacity of Abba Eban at
the United Nations, delivered in that urbanity and self-assurance
characteristic of Western diplomats, however fraudulent, claiming that
Israel was an innocent victim of Egyptian aggression.

Later
that summer in London, I was intrigued by billboards in Golders Green,
with quotations from the Hebrew prophets, assuring readers that those
who trusted in biblical prophecy could not be surprised by Israel's
victory. Up to then, my understanding was thatbiblical prophecy related to the period of the prophets, and
was not about predicting the future. The prophets were
“forth-tellers” for God, rather than foretellers of future events.
I was intrigued that others thought differently.

I was to learn later, in the 1980s and 1990s, that the 1967
war inaugurated a new phase in the Zionist conquest of Mandated
Palestine, one which brought theological assertions and biblical
interpretations to the very heart of the ideology that propelled the
Israeli conquest and set the pattern for Jewish settlement. After two
more years of theology, ordination, and three years of postgraduate
biblical studies, I made my first visit to Israel-Palestine at Easter
1972, with a party of postgraduate students from the Pontifical
Biblical Institute in Rome.

Seeing
and Believing

The visit offered the first
challenge to my favorable predisposition toward Israel. I was disturbed by
the ubiquitous signs of the oppression of the Arabs, whom later I learned
to call Palestinians. I was witnessing some kind of “institutionalized
oppression” — I cannot recall whether 'apartheid'was part of my vocabulary at the time. The experience must have been
profound since, when the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973, my
support for Israel did not match my enthusiasm of 1967. I had no
particular interest in the area for the remainder of the 1970s, but I
recall watching on TV the visit of Egypt's President Sadat to the Israeli
Knesset in November 1977, an initiative which would culminate in a formal
peace agreement in Camp David in 1979. Things changed for me in the 1980s.

In 1981 I went with a party
from my university to visit Bir Zeit University in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank. Because the campus was closed by the military just before our
arrival, carefully planned programs had to yield to Palestinian “ad-hocery.”
Bir Zeit put a bus at our disposal, and equal numbers of its and our
students constituted a university on wheels. I was profoundly shocked when
I began to see from the inside the reality of land expropriation and the
on-going Jewish settlement of the West Bank. I began to question the
prevailing view that the Israeli occupation was for security reasons, but
even with such obvious evidence I could not bring myself to abandon it.

I spent my 1983-84
sabbatical year at Jerusalem’sécoleBiblique researching the Pauline Epistles.Again, the day-to-day life in Jerusalem sharpened my
sensitivities. I was beginning to suspect that the Israeli occupation was
not after all for security reasons, but was an expansion toward the
achievement of “Greater Israel,” which, I was to learn later, was the
goal of even mainstream Zionism.

One incident in particular
alerted me to the religious dimension of the conflict. On a spring morning
in 1984, the Voice of Israel radio reported that during the night a Jewish
terrorist group had been caught attempting to blow up the Dome of the Rock
and the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount), only a
few hundred meters south of the École.
Subsequently the newspapers published a picture of one of those convicted
of the offence, wearing the typical dress of the religious settler
movement Gush Emunim. He had the
Book of Psalms in his hand as the judge read out the verdict. That an
attempted act of such enormous international and inter-faith significance
sprang from religious fervor shocked me. Settler Jews performed other acts
of terror during that year, and the name of the overtly racist Rabbi Meir
Kahane was seldom off the headlines.

I can date to that period
also voicing my first displeasure at my perception that the land
traditions of the Bible appeared to mandate the genocide of the indigenes
of '“Canaan.”At the end
of his public lecture in Tantur, I suggested to Marc Ellis, a young Jewish
theologian who was developing a Jewish Theology of Liberation with strong
dependence on the Hebrew prophets, that it would be no more difficult to
construct a Theology of Oppression on the basis of other biblical
traditions, especially those dealing with Israelite origins that demanded
the destruction of other peoples.

Following my sabbatical in
1984, I returned to London where, later that year, a colleague told me of
the plea of Abuna Elias Chacour of Ibillin to pilgrims from the West to
meet the Christian communities, “the Living Stones” of the land, and
not be satisfied with the “dead stones” of archaeological sites. Soon
a group of interested people in London established the ecumenical trust, Living Stones, which promotes links between Christians in Britain
and the Holy Land, and appointed me Chairman. In 1985 I co-led a study
tour to Israel and the Occupied Territories, and led a group of priests on
a “Retreat through Pilgrimage” in 1987 and made other visits in 1990
and 1991.

In 1991, I participated in
an International Peace Walk from Jerusalem to Amman, and although I did
not reach the destination, I gained the acquaintance of several groups of
Israeli soldiers and police, enjoyed detention twice, and faced into what
appeared to be an inevitable spell in prison. Officially, my crime, in the
first instance, was to have trespassed into “a closed military zone”
on the outskirts of Ramallah, and in the second, to have refused to leave
a similarly designated area on the way from Taybeh to Jericho. The real
purpose of such designations was to halt the silent walk of some 30
“peaceniks” from about 15countries. Our presence was having a decidedly energizing effect on
the Palestinians, who did not dare protest so forthrightly.

A few hours into walking
silently over the Judean hills, before beginning our descent into the
Jordan Valley, we were informed by the military that we were inside “a
military zone.” While our negotiators were engaging the Commanding
Officer of the district, we sat on the side of the road and sang peace
songs. I opened with a rendition, in my bel
canto Irish-accented Hebrew, of Psalm 119 (118). My singing of this
Passover song of deliverance had an obviously disturbing effect on the
young soldiers “guarding” us. Formal arrest and several hours’
detention in Jericho followed. To the policeman who informed me that I
could make one phone call, I replied that I wished to speak to the Pope.
“I am sorry, it cannot be international.”My comportment during the day-long detention — insisting on
the group being fed, being polite but firm under interrogation, refusing
to sign my 'statement' of incrimination, etc.— left the police in no
doubt about whom I considered to be the criminals.

After
a long, wearying day in detention in sun-baked Jericho, we were driven to
what we were assured would be a “prison.” This was not good news. The
principal of my college would not be pleased to read: “Sorry I cannot be
there in time for class — am in prison in the Holy Land!”In the event, we were brought to a police station in
Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, and even having refused to sign another
declaration, we were released. The peacewalk experience demonstrated how
police, defense forces and the noble discourse of jurisprudence itself,
designed to protect the vulnerable, can legitimize oppression, something I
had experienced already in London while I struggled for the human rights
of gypsies.

It took some time for my
experiences to acquire an ideological framework. Gradually I read more of
the modern history of the region. In addition to bringing a university
group in 1992, I spent August in the Ècole
Biblique, and while there interviewed prominent Palestinians,
including the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, the Greek
Orthodox Archbishop Timotheos, the Anglican Bishop Samir Kafity, Canon
Naim Ateek, and the Vice-President of Bir Zeit University, Dr. Gabi
Baramki.

I made three visits in
1993, one at Easter to prepare the Cumberland Lodge Conference on
Christians in the Holy Land, one for study in August, and the third to
bring a group of students. Although my academic concentration in that
period was on the scene of Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke
4.16-30), my growing unease about the link between biblical spirituality
and oppression stimulated me to examine the land traditions of the Bible,
and so I began to read the narrative systematically with that theme in
mind.

Yahweh
and Ethnic Cleansing

What
struck me most about the biblical narrative was that the divine promise of
land was integrally linked with the mandate to exterminate the indigenous
peoples, and I had to wrestle with my perception that those traditions
were inherently oppressive and morally reprehensible. Even the Exodus
narrative was problematic. While it portrays Yahweh as having compassion
on the misery of his people, and as willing to deliver them from the
Egyptians and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus
3.7-8), that was only part of the picture. Although the reading of Exodus
3, both in the Christian liturgy and in the classical texts of liberation
theologies, halts abruptly in the middle of verse 8 at the description of
the land as one “flowing with milk and honey,” the biblical text
itself continues, “to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the
Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” Manifestly,
the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, had no lack of indigenous
peoples, and, according to the narrative, would soon flow with
blood:

When my angel goes in
front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the
Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot
them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or
follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break
their pillars in pieces (Exodus 23.23-24).

Matters got worse in the
narrative of the Book of Deuteronomy. After the King of Heshbon refused
passage to the Israelites, Yahweh gave him over to the Israelites who
captured and utterly destroyed all the cities, killing all the men, women,
and children (Deuteronomy 2.33-34). The fate of the King of Bashan was no
better (3.3). Yahweh's role was central:

When Yahweh your God
brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he
clears away many nations before you — the Hittites, the Girgashites,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites...and when
Yahweh your God gives them over to you...you must utterly destroy
them...Show them no mercy...For you are a people holy to Yahweh your
God; Yahweh your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to
be his people, his treasured possession (Deuteronomy 7.1-11; see also
9.1-5; 11.8-9, 23, 31-32).

And again, from the mouth of
Moses:

But as for the towns of
these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, you
must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate
them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites,
the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as Yahweh your God has commanded,
so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they
do for their gods, and you thus sin against Yahweh your God (Deuteronomy
20.16-18).

It was some shock to
realize that the narrative presents “ethnic cleansing” as not only
legitimate, but as required by the deity. The book ends with Moses's sight
of the promised land before he dies (34.1-3). Although Moses was
unequalled in his deeds, he left a worthy successor, Joshua, who, after
Moses had lain his hands on him, was full of the spirit of wisdom
(34.4-12). So much for the preparation for entry into the Promised Land.

The first part of the Book
of Joshua (chapters 2-12) describes the conquest of a few key cities, and
their fate in accordance with the laws of the Holy War. Even when the
Gibeonites were to be spared, the Israelite elders complained at the lapse
in fidelity to the mandate to destroy all the inhabitants of the land
(9.21-27). Joshua took Makkedah, utterly destroying every person in it
(10.28). A similar fate befell other cities (10.29-39): everything that
breathed was destroyed, as Yahweh commanded (10.40-43). Joshua utterly
destroyed the inhabitants of the cities of the north as well (11.1-23).
Yahweh gave to Israel all the land that he swore to their ancestors he
would give them (21.43-45). The legendary achievements of Yahweh through
the agencies of Moses, Aaron, and Joshua are kept before the Israelites
even in their prayers: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove
out the nations and planted it” (Psalm 80.8; see also Psalms
78.54-55; 105.44).

By modern standards of
international law and human rights, what these biblical narratives mandate
are “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” While readers
might seek refuge in the claim that the problem lies with the
predispositions of the modern reader, rather than with the text itself,
one could not escape so easily. One must acknowledge that much of the
Torah, and the Book of Deuteronomy in particular, contains menacing
ideologies and racist, xenophobic and militaristic tendencies. The
implications of the existence of dubious moral dispositions, presented as
mandated by the divinity, within a book which is canonized as Sacred
Scripture, invited the most serious investigation. Was there a way of
reading the traditions which could rescue the Bible from being a blunt
instrument of oppression, and acquit God of the charge of being the Great
Ethnic-Cleanser?

In that August of 1994, the
École library had just received
a Festschrift consisting of
studies in Deuteronomy. In addition to articles covering the customary
source, historical-critical, and literarydiscussions, it contained one by F.E. Deist, with the intriguing
title, “The Dangers of Deuteronomy,” which discussed the role of that
book in support of apartheid.1 It dealt
with the text from the perspective of its reception history, especially
within the ideology of an emerging Afrikaner nationalism. During that
month I also read A.G. Lamadrid's discussion of the role of the Bible and
Christian theology in the Iberian conquest of Latin America.2
The problem, then, went beyond academic reflection on the interpretation
of ancient documents.

Somebody must have
addressed the moral question before, I presumed. Back in Jerusalem in
August 1995, I realized that this was not the case. Even though Gerhard
von Rad lamented in 1943 that no thorough investigation of “the land”
had been made, no serious study of the topic was undertaken for another 30
years. Even W.D. Davies acknowledged later that he had written his seminal
work “The Gospel and the Land” at the request of friends in Jerusalem
who, just before the war in 1967, had urged his support for the cause of
Israel. Moreover, he confessed that he wrote both his 1982 “The
Territorial Dimensions of Judaism” under the direct impact of that war,
and its 1991 updated version because of the mounting need to understand
the theme in the light of events in the Middle East, culminating in the
Gulf War and its aftermath. I was intrigued by the frankness with which
Davies publicized his hermeneutical key: “Here I have concentrated on
what in my judgment must be the beginning for an understanding of this
conflict: the sympathetic attempt to comprehend the Jewish tradition.”3

While Davies considers
“the land” from virtually every other conceivable perspective, little
attention is given to broadly moral and human rights issues. In
particular, he excludes from his concern, “What happens when the
understanding of the Promised Land in Judaism conflicts with the claims of
the traditions and occupancy of its other peoples?”He excused himself by saying that to engage that issue would demand
another volume, without indicating his intention of embarking upon such an
enterprise. I wondered whether Davies would have been equally sanguine had
white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or even white Catholics of European
provenance been among the displaced people who paid the price for the
prize of Zionism. Reflecting a somewhat elastic moral sense, Davies,
although perturbed by the aftermath of the 1967 conquest, took the
establishment of the State of Israel in his stride. Showing no concern for
the foundational injustice done to the Palestinians in 1948, Davies wrote
as if there were later a moral equivalence between the dispossessed
Palestinians and the dispossessing Zionists. The rights of the rapist and
the victim were finely balanced.

Walter Brueggemann's “The
Land” brought me no further. While he saw land as perhaps “the central
theme” of biblical faith, he bypassed the treatment to be meted out to
the indigenous inhabitants, affirming, “What is asked is not courage to
destroy enemies, but courage to keep Torah,” avoiding the fact that
“keeping Torah”in this
context demanded accepting its xenophobic and destructive militarism. By
1994, however, Brueggemann was less sanguine, noting that while the
scholastic community had provided “rich and suggestive studies on the
‘land theme’ in the Bible...they characteristically stop before they
get to the hard part, contemporary issues of land in the Holy Land.” 4

It was beginning to dawn on
me that much biblical investigation — especially that concentration on
the past which is typical of the historical-critical method — was quite
indifferent to moral considerations. Indeed, it was becoming clear that
the discipline of biblical studies over the last hundred years reflected
the Eurocentric perspectives of virtually all Western historiography and
had contributed significantly to the oppression of native peoples. The
benevolent interpretation of biblical traditions which advocate atrocities
and war crimes had given solace to those bent on the exploitation of new
lands at the expense of native peoples. While the behavior of communities
and nation states is complex, and is never the result of one element of
motivation, there is abundant evidence that the Bible has been, and still
is for some, the ideathatredeems the conquest of
the earth. This was particularly true in the case of the Arabs of
Palestine, in whose country I had reached these conclusions as I studied
the Bible.

By the autumn of 1995 I was
well into a book on the subject, and in November I went to discuss with
Sheffield Academic Press a draft MS on “The Bible and Zionism.” The
editor, apprehensive at my concentration on Zionism, persuaded me to use
three case studies. The task ahead, then, would require further immersion
in the histories of Latin America, South Africa, and Israel, as well as a
more detailed study of the biblical narrative and its interpretation in
the hands of the biblical academy.

Having had my moral being
sensitized by the biblical mandate to commit genocide, I was amazed that
scholars had a high esteem for the Book of Deuteronomy. Indeed,
commentators conventionally assess it to be a theological book par excellence, and the focal point of the religious history of the
Old Testament. In the Nov. 14, 1995 Lattey Lecture in Cambridge
University, Professor Norbert Lohfink argued that it provides a model of
an utopian society in which there would be no poor.5In my role as the formal proposer of a vote of thanks — I
was the chairperson of the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain
— I invited him to consider whether, in the light of that book's
insistence on a mandate to commit genocide, the utopian society would be
possible only after the invading Israelites had wiped out the indigenous
inhabitants. The protocol of the Lattey Lecture left the last word with
me, and subsequently I was given a second word, being invited to deliver
the 1997 Lattey Lecture, for which I chose the title, “A Land flowing
with Milk, Honey, and People.“6

O
Little Bantustan of Bethlehem

The final revision of my
study on the relation between the Bible and colonialism was undertaken in
1996-97 while I was Visiting Professor in Bethlehem University and
Scholar-in-Residence in Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem. My context
was a persistent reminder of the degradation and oppression which
colonizing enterprises inflict on their indigenes. I also became more
aware of the collusion of Western scholarship in the enterprise.

Working against a
background of bullet fire, and in the shadow of tanks, added a certain
intensity to my research. Several bullets landed on the flat roof of
Tantur on 25-26 September 1996. Two Palestinians, one a graduate of the
University, were killed in Bethlehem, and many more, Palestinians and
Israeli soldiers, were killed in the disturbances elsewhere in the West
Bank. However, with no bullets flying in Jerusalem on the 26th, I was able
to deliver my advertised public lecture in the Swedish Christian Study
Center, entitled “Does the God of the Bible sanction Ethnic
Cleansing?”By mid-December
I was able to send the MS of“The
Bible and Colonialism” to Sheffield Academic Press.

I preached at the 1996
Christmas Midnight Mass in Bethlehem University, presided over by Msgr.
Montezemolo, the Holy See's Apostolic Delegate, a key player in the
signing of the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of
Israel on 30 December 1993. I reflected with the congregation that,
notwithstanding the Christmas rhetoric about God's Glory in the Highest
Heaven and Peace on Earth, the reality of Bethlehem brought one down to
earth rather quickly. I assured them that passing by the checkpoint
between Bethlehem and Jerusalem twice a day made me boil with anger at the
humiliation which the colonizing enterprise of Zionism had inflicted on
the people of the region. I suggested that the Christmas narratives
portray the ordinary people as the heroes and the rulers as the
anti-heroes, as if assuring believers that the mighty will be cast down,
and that God is working for the oppressed today. I would meet His
Excellency again soon.

On 30 December, I listened
to Msgr. Montezemolo lecture in Notre Dame on the third anniversary of the
Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and Israel. The audience was
composed exclusively of expatriate Christians and Israeli Jews, with not a
Palestinian in sight.

Well into the question time, I violated the somewhat
sycophantic atmosphere: “I had expected that the Agreement would have
given the Holy See some leverage in putting pressure on Israel vis-à-vis
the Palestinians, if only on the matter of freedom to worship in Jerusalem
— Palestinians have been forbidden entry into even East Jerusalem,
whether on Friday or Sunday, since March 1993.”

His Excellency replied rhetorically, “Do you not think that
the Holy See is doing all it can?” At the reception afterwards, a
certain Ambassador Gilboa, one of the Israeli architects of the Agreement,
berated me in a most aggressive fashion for my question. Rather than
assuming the posture of a culprit, I took the attack to him on the matter
of the Jews having “kicked out” the Palestinians in 1948. “No, they
were not kicked out,” he, who was a soldier at the time, insisted. “In
fact helicop ters dropped leaflets on the Arab towns, beseeching the
inhabitants to stay put, etc.”

I told him I did not
believe him, and cited even the Israeli revisionist historiographer, Benny
Morris, whom he dismissed as a compulsive attention-seeker. It was obvious
all round the room that a not insignificant altercation was taking place.
In the hope of discouraging him from trying to stifle the truth in the
future, I assured him that he should have remained a soldier, because he
had the manners of a “corner-boy,” and not what I expected from a
diplomat. I went home righteous.

Academic life rolled on. My
28 Feb. 1997 lecture on “The Bible and Zionism” seemed to perplex
several of the students of Bethlehem Bible College. Most of the questions
reflected a literalist understanding of the Bible, and I struggled to
convey the impression that there were forms ofdiscourse other than history.

Having visited the
Christian Peacemaker Team inHebron
as a gesture of solidarity on 6 March, I returned home for the Tantur
public lecture on “The Future of Religious Zionism” by the Jewish
philosopher, Professor David Hartman.It was an eventful occasion.Hartman
gave a dazzling exegesis on the theme of covenant, from the Bible through
the Rabbis, to Zionism. My journal takes the matter up from the second
half of his talk, devoted to questions:

I made the fourth
intervention, to the effect that in being brought through the stages of
understanding of the covenant, from the Bible to Rabbinic Judaism, I was
enchanted, and much appreciative. However, I was shocked to hear Zionism
described as “the high point of covenantal spirituality.” Zionism, as
I saw it, both in its rhetoric and in its practice, was not an ideology of
sharing, but one of displacing. I was shocked, therefore, that what others
might see as an example of 19th-century colonial plunder was
being clothed in the garment of spirituality.

Somewhat shaken, Professor
Hartman thanked me for my question, and set about putting the historical
record straight. The real problem was that the Arabs had not welcomed Jews
back to their homeland. Moreover, the displacement of the Arabs was never
intended, but was forced on the Zionist leadership by the attack of the
Arab armies in 1948. Nevertheless, great developments in history sometimes
require initial destruction: consider how the USA had defeated
totalitarianism, although this was preceded by the displacement of the
Indians.

On the following day, in
the discussion time after my final session of teaching on “Jesus the
Liberator”in Tantur, one of
the Continuing Education students brought the discussion back to the
previous day's deliberations. He was very embarrassed by my attack on
“that holy man.”

There was a particularly lively exchange with several getting
into the discussion.A second
student said that he was delighted with my question yesterday and was sure
that it represented the disquiet of many of the group. A third responded
enthusiastically to my liberation ethic, saying that it disturbed him, but
he had to cope with the disturbance. An American priest came to me
afterwards, saying how much he appreciated my courage in speaking
yesterday, and on a previous occasion, etc. His enthusiasm was not shared
by everyone. After the class, an advertising notice appeared on the board
from the overseer of the Scholar's Colloquium. It read, “Dr. Michael
Prior presents a largish paper, ‘Zionism: from the Secular to the
Sacred,’ which is a chapter from a book he is in the process of
writing.” The next paragraph read:

Zionism is a subject on
which there are hot opinions — not least from the author himself. Some
have suggested to me that this disunity is a reason why we should not
discuss such matters at all. I believe the opposite: the quality of hot
opinions is best tested in a scholarly discussion, where they must be
supported by evidence and good argument. One can even learn something.
Welcome!

The Swedish New Testament
scholar, Bengt Holmberg, chaired the Colloquium.

The first scholar to
respond to my paper, a U.S. Catholic veteran of the Jewish-Christian
dialogue, did so in a decidedly aggressive manner, accusing me of
disloyalty to the Church, etc.

The second was long in
praise.

The third intimated that
there was nothing new in the paper, and rambled on about the Zionists'
intentions to bring benefits to the indigenous population, etc. Losing
patience, I asked him to produce evidence for his claims, adding that not
only was there not such evidence, but the evidence there was showed that
the Zionist ideologues were virtually at one in their determination to rid
the land of Arabs.

A fourth scholar, a Dutch
Protestant veteran of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, chastised me for my
audacity in addressing the question at all, insisting that I should be
silent, because I was an outsider and a Christian.

I rose to the challenge.
Was I understanding him to say that, having seen the distress of the
Palestinian people for myself, I should now not comment on it? Was he
asking me to deny my experience, or merely to mute my critique? I assured
the Colloquium that as a biblical scholar, and an ongoing witness to what
transpired in the region, I considered it an obligation to protest what
was going on. Once again, the admiring remarks were made later, in
private.

The proofs of “The Bible
and Colonialism” arrived on Good Friday. I got my first taste of teargas
in the vicinity of Rachel's Tomb on my way to Easter Sunday Mass at St.
Catherine's in Bethlehem. On 3 April, I delivered the Tantur public
lecture, “The Moral Problem of the Bible's Land Traditions,'“ followed
by questions, both appreciative and hostile. Uniquely for the series, the
lecture was not advertised in the Jerusalem Post. In dealing with a
trilogy of hostile questions I availed of the opportunity to say that I
considered Zionism to be one of the most perniciousideologies of the 20th century, particularly evil
because of its essential link with religious values.

Stars from the West studded
the sky over Bethlehem for the celebrations of Tantur's 25th
birthday (25-28 May 1997). Under the light of the plainly visible Hale-Bopp comet, a frail Teddy Kollek was introduced at the opening
ceremony as though he were the founder of the Institute. A choir from the
USA sang, one song in Hebrew. Palestinian faces, not least that of Afif
Safieh, the Palestinian Delegate to the UK and the Holy See, looked
decidedly out of joint throughout the opening festivities. But the
Palestinians were not altogether forgotten, being thanked profusely for
their work in the kitchen and around the grounds.

Moreover, for the lecture
on “Christians of the Holy Land” which was given on May 27, prominent
Palestinians were invited to speak from the floor. Although the lecture
was billed to be presented by a distinguished expatriate scholar “with
local presenters,” in fact the Palestinian savants had been invited only
to the audience floor. Having excused himself from dealing with the
political context, the lecturer delivered an urbane, accomplished
historical perspective.

The token Palestinians were
invited to speak from the floor, first Naim Ateek, then Mitri Raheb, and
then Kevork Hintlian. After two rabbis had their say, also from the floor,
I was allowed to speak, wishing to make two points: that my experience
with the Palestinians had impressed upon me their unity, rather than their
diversity, and, secondly, that the Jewish-Christian dialogue had been
hijacked by a Zionist agenda. After one more sentence had escaped from my
mouth the Chair stopped me short. I had broken the Solemn Silence. This
was the third time that year I had been prevented from speaking in public.
I paused, producing a most uncomfortable silence, thanked him, and sat
down.

Saturday 31 May, 1997 being
the 28th anniversary of my ordination, I determined to do something
different. Since it was also the Feast of the Visitation, I decided that I
would go to Ein Karem, the traditional site of Mary‘s visit to her
cousin Elizabeth. But on the way, I would call at Jabal Abu Ghneim, the
hill opposite Tantur, which, despite UN condemnation, was being prepared
for an Israeli settlement. The teeth of the high-tech machinery had cut
into the rock, having chewed up thousands of trees. Joseph Conrad’s
phrase, “the relentless progress of our race,” kept coming at me.

On the way to Ein
Karem, I
visited Mount Herzl to see the grave of the founder of Zionism. Knowing
that I would also visit the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, I was struck by the
irony of the situation. Theodor Herzl was sure that Jews could survive
only in their own nation state. Nevertheless, he died a natural death in
Europe, and was re-interred in the new state in 1949, while Prime Minister
Rabin, born in Palestine, was gunned down by a Jewish religious zealot in
what was intended to be the sole haven for Jews.

Back in England

I returned to London in
July 1997. By December, “The Bible and Colonialism” and “Western
Scholarship and the History of Palestine” were hot off the press.In “The Bible and Colonialism”I promised that I would discuss elsewhere the more theological aspects
of Zionism, and, while still in Jerusalem in 1997, I had laid out my plans
for writing the book I had really wanted to write some years earlier.

I submitted a draft MS to a
distinguished publisher in November 1997, and even though the anonymous
reader found it to be “a brilliant book which must be published,” the
press declined, because, I was informed orally, the press had “a very
strong Jewish list,” and could not offend its Jewish contributors and
readers. While an American publishing company judged it to be “a
prodigious achievement of historical and theological investigation” and
“a very important work,” it deemed that it would not really suit its
publishing program. Routledge “bit the bullet,” publishing it under
the title “Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry.”7

On the basis of his having
read my “The Bible and Colonialism,”Professor Heikki Räisänen of the University of Helsinki invited me
to address the most prestigious of the international biblical conferences,
the Society of Biblical Literature International Conference (Helsinki-Lahti, 16-22 July 1999) on the subject, “The Bible and
Zionism.” The session at which I was invited to speak dealt with
'“Reception History and Moral Criticism of the Bible,” and I was
preceded by Professors Robert Jewett (USA) and David Clines (UK) on
aspects of Paul and Job, respectively.

When my hour came, I invited biblical scholarship not to
maintain an academic detachment from significant engagement in
contemporary issues. I noted that “the view that the Bible provides the
title-deed for the establishment of the State of Israel and for its
policies since 1948 is so pervasive even within mainstream Christian
theology and university biblical studies, that the very attempt to raise
the issue is sure to elicit opposition. The disfavor usually took the form
of personal abuse, and the intimidation of publishers.”

In the light of what
happened next I might have added that one is seldom honored by having the
substantive issues addressed in the usual way.

After I had delivered my
25-minute lecture the official respondent, who had my paper a month in
advance, said he would bypass the usual niceties (“A very fine paper,
etc.”), and got down to his objections, which were so standard as not to
deserve my refutation. Instead I suggested to the Chair to open up the
discussion.

Some five Israelis in turn
took up the challenge. “Jews have always longed for the land.” “They
never intended displacing anyone.” “The land was empty — almost.”“I was wrong historically: Herzl never intended dislocating the
Arabs.”

I interrupted, quoting
Herzl's 12 June 1895 diary entry — in the original German for good
measure — about his endeavor to expel the poor population, etc.

I was berated for having
raised a '“political matter” in an academic conference: “See what
can happen when one abandons the historical critical method!” Another
Israeli professor began by saying, “I am very pleased to have been here
this morning,” but added, “because I understand better now how
anti-Semitism can present itself as anti-Zionism, all under the guise of
academic scholarship.”A
cabal, including at least one Israeli and a well-known scholar from
Germany, clapped. The Chair had to restore order.

In the course of my
“defense” I reiterated that it was the displacement of another people
that raised the moral problematic for me. I had witnessed the effects of
theoppression
rather more than even most of the audience. Having been given the last
word, I professed that until Israelis acknowledge their having displaced
another people and make some reparation and accommodation, there would be
no future for the state.

In the course of the
following day several who had attended expressed their appreciation,
albeit in private.A Finnish
scholar congratulated me on having raised a vital issue, adding, “The
way you were received added sharpness to your argument.” A distinguished
biblical scholar from Germany, who was very distressed by my having raised
the question, later pleaded that his people were responsible for killing
six million Jews.

The
Importance ofthe Issue

I
have learned that, distinctively in the case of Zionist colonisation,
a determined effort was made to rid the terrain altogether of the
native population, since their presence in any number would frustrate
the grand design of establishing a Jewish state. The necessity of
removing the Arabs was recognised from the beginning of the Zionist
enterprise — and advocated by all major Zionist ideologues from
Theodor Herzl to Ehud Barak — and was meticulously planned and
executed in 1948 and 1967. In their determination to present an
unblemished record of the Zionist achievement, the fabricators of
propagandistic Zionist history are among the most accomplished
practitioners of the strange craft of source-doctoring, rewriting not
only their history, but the documents upon which such a history was
based. The propagandistic intent was to hide things said and done, and
to bequeath to posterity only a sanitized version of the past.

In
any case, the argument for the compelling need of Jews to settle in a
Jewish state does not constitute a right to displace an indigenous
population.And even if
it had never been intended from the start, which it most certainly
was, the moral problematic arises most acutely precisely from the fact
that Zionism has wreaked havoc on the indigenous population, and not a
little inconvenience on several surrounding states. Nor can the Shoah
(Holocaust) be appealed to credibly to justify the destruction of
an innocent third party. It is a dubious moral principle to regard the
barbaric treatment of Jews by the Third Reich as constituting a right
to establish a Jewish state at the expense of an innocent third party.
Surely the victims of Auschwitz would not have approved.

My study of the Bible in
the Land of the Bible brought me face to face with the turbulence of
Israel-Palestine and raised questions not only about the link between
biblical interpretation and colonial exploitation but about the nature
of the biblical narrative itself. An academic interest became a
consuming moral imperative.

Why should the State of
Israel, any more than any other state, be such a challenge to
morality? The first reason, I suggest, derives from the general moral
question attendant upon the forcible displacement of an indigenous
people from its homeland. The second springs from the unique place
that the land has in the Sacred Scriptures of both Jews and
Christians, and the significance attached to it as the location of the
state for Jews. In addition, there is the positive assessment of the
State of Israel on the part of the majority of religious Jews of
various categories, as well as in certain Christian ecclesial and
theologicalcircles.

As a biblical scholar, I have been shocked to discover that
the only plausible validation for the displacement of the Palestinians
derived from a naïve interpretation of the Bible, and that in many
Church and academic parties — and not only the “fundamentalist”
wing — biblical literalism swept away any concerns deriving from
considerations of morality. I contend that fidelity to the literary
genre of the biblical traditions and respect for the evidence provided
mainly by archaeological investigation demands a rejection of such
simplistic readings of the biblical narratives of land, and of the
prophetic oracles of restoration.

And to these academic
perspectives, one must add one of faith, namely, that God is
fundamentally moral, and, for those espousing the Christian vision,
loves all his people, irrespective of race, etc.

Rather than relate the
establishment of the State of Israel to the Shoah,
I have been led gradually to situate Zionism within the category of
xenophobic imperialism, so characteristic of the major European powers
towards the end of the 19th century. I consider the
espousal of it by a majority of Jews world-wide to mark the nadir of
Jewish morality. Because I trust in a God before whom tyranny
ultimately dissolves, and because one learns something from history, I
have no doubt that a future generation of diaspora and Israeli Jews
will repudiate its presumptions, and repent for the injustices
perpetrated on the Palestinians by their fathers and grandfathers.

While I regret the descent
of Judaism into the embrace of Zionism, there is little I can do about
it. However, the degree to which a thoroughly Zionised Judaism infects
the so-called Jewish-Christian dialogue — which I prefer to
designate “a monologue in two voices“ — is a matter of grave
concern. I am perturbed that concurrence with a Zionist reading of
Jewish history — that Jews everywhere, and at all times, wanted to
re-establish a nation state in Palestine (with no concern for the
indigenous population), etc.— is virtually a component of the credo
of the dialogue. In that fabricated scenario, the planned, and
systematically executed dislocation of the Palestinian population, far
from incurring the wrath of post-colonial liberalism, becomes an
object of honor, and even religious significance. While most Jews
world-wide — there are notable exceptions—allow themselves to be
deluded by such perspectives, I see no reason why Christians should.

God
the Ethnic Cleanser?

Often I am asked: How do you as a Catholic priest and biblical
scholar explain to an ordinary believer the Yahweh-sanctioned
ethnic-cleansing mandated in some ofthe narrative of the Old Testament? Is not this also the Word
of God? Such questions have forced themselves on me in a particular
way as a result of my contact with the Holy Land. Let me indicate some
of my perspectives. But first, let us look at the stakes.

Recently
a full-page advertisement in the 10 September 2000 New York Times,
signed by over 150 Jewish scholars and leaders, stated:

Christians
can respect the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel.
The most important event for Jews since the Holocaust has been the
reestablishment of a Jewish state in the Promised Land. As members
of a biblically-based religion, Christians appreciate that Israel
was promised — and given — to Jews as the physical center of the
covenant between them and God. Many Christians support the State of
Israel for reasons far more profound than mere politics. As Jews, we
applaud this support.

Here we see clothed in the garment of piety the Zionist
enterprise, which was determined to create a state for Jews at the
expense of the indigenous Arab people — a product of the
nationalistic and imperialistic spirit of 19th-century
Europe.

Whatever
pangs of conscience one might have about the expulsion of a million
Palestinian Arabs, and the destruction of their villages to ensure
they would not return, the Bible can salve it. Zionism, a program
originally despised by both wings of Judaism, Orthodox and Reform, as
being anti-religious (by the Orthodox) and contrary to the universal
mission of Judaism (by Reform Jewry), is now at the core of the Jewish
credo.And credulous Christians allow themselves to be sucked into the
vortex. Only when Zionism is being evaluated are normal rules of morality suspended; only here is
ethnic-cleansing applauded by the religious spirit.

Many
theologians on seeing how the revered sacred text has been used as an
instrument of oppression seek refuge in the view that it is the misuse
of the Bible, rather than the text itself which is the problem. The
blame is shifted from the non-problematic biblical text to the
perverse predispositions of the interpreter.

This
“solution” evades the problem. It must be acknowledged that
several traditions within the Bible lend themselves to oppressive
interpretations and applications, precisely because of their
inherently oppressive nature.

Towards
a Moral Reading of the Bible

My
approach is set forth in a chapter of my book, “The Bible and
Colonialism. A Moral Critique.”8I
begin by stressing how important it is to acknowledge the existence of
texts of unsurpassed violence within Sacred Scripture, and to
recognise them to be an affront to moral sensitivities. The problem is
not only theoretical. In addition to being morally reprehensible
texts, some have fuelled terrible injustices through colonialist
enterprises.

The
Holy War traditions of the Old Testament pose an especially difficult
moral problem. In addition to portraying God as one who cherishes the
slaughter of his created ones, they acquit the killer of moral
responsibility for his destruction, presenting it as a religious
obligation.

Every
effort must be made to rescue the Bible from being a blunt instrument
in the oppression of one people by another. If a naïve
interpretation leads to such unacceptable conclusions, what kind of
exegesis canrescue it?

Some
exegetes note that Christians read the Old Testament in the light of
the life and paschal mystery of Christ. In such a perspective, the
writings of the Old Testament contain certain “imperfect and
provisional” elements, which the divine pedagogy could not eliminate
right away. The Bible, then, reflects a considerable moral
development, which finds its completion in the New Testament. I do not
find this proposal satisfactory.

The attempts of the Fathers of the Church to eliminate the
scandal caused by particular texts of the Bible do little for me. The
allegorical presentation of Joshua leading the people into the land of
Canaan as a type of Christ, who leads Christians into the true
promised land does not impress.

The
Catholic Church deals with the embarrassment of having divinely
mandated ethnic cleansing in the biblical narrative by either
excluding it altogether from public use, or excising the most
offensive verses. The disjuncture between this censoring of the Word
of God and the insistence on the divine provenance of the whole of the
Scriptures has not been satisfactorily resolved.

There
is another method which is more amenable to modern sensibilities, one
which takes seriously the literary forms of the materials, the
circumstances of their composition, and relevant non-literary
evidence.According to
this view, the fundamental tenet of the Protestant Reformation that
the Bible can be understood in a straightforward way must be
abandoned. Narratives purporting to describe the past are not
necessarily accurate records of it. One must respect the distinctive
literary forms within the biblical narrative — legend, fabricated
myths of the past, prophecy and apocalyptic, etc.

The
relevant biblical narratives of the past are not simple history, but
reflect the religious and political ideologies of their much later
authors. It is now part of the scholarly consensus that the
patriarchal narratives of Genesis do not record events of an alleged
patriarchal period, but are retrojections into a past about which the
writers knew little, reflecting the author's intentions at the later
period of composition. It is naïve, then, to cleave to the view that
God made the promise of progeny and land to Abraham after the fashion
indicated in Genesis 15.

The
Exodus narrative poses particular difficulties for any reader who is
neither naïve
nor amoral. It is the entrance (Eisodus) into the land of milk and
honey which keeps the hope of the wandering Israelites alive. It is
high time that readers read the narrative with sensitivity to the
innocent third-party about to be exterminated, that is, “with the
eyes of the Canaanites.”

Moreover,
there is virtual unanimity among scholars that the model of tribal
conquest as narrated in Joshua 1-12 is unsustainable. Leaving aside
the witness of theBible, we have no evidence that there was a Hebrewconquest.Evidence
from archaeology, extra-biblical literature, etc., points in an
altogether different direction from that propounded by Joshua 1-12. It
suggests a sequence of periods marked by a gradual and peaceful
coalescence of disparate peoples into a group of highland dwellers
whose achievement of a new sense of unity culminated only with the
entry of the Assyrian administration. The Iron I Age settlements on
the central hills of Palestine, from which the later kingdom of Israel
developed, reflect continuity with Canaanite culture, and repudiate
any ethnic distinction between “Canaanites” and “Israelites.”
Israel's origins, then, were within Canaan, not outside it. There was
neither invasion from outside, nor revolution within.

A
historiography of Israelite origins based solely, or primarily on the
biblical narratives is an artificial construct influenced by certain
religious motivations obtaining at a time long post-dating any
verifiable evidence of events. Accordingly, pace
the 150 plus Jewish scholars and rabbis who signed The New York
Times ad, the biblical narrative is not sufficient to transform
barbarism into piety.

Conclusion

Western theological
scholarship, while strong in its critique of repressive regimes
elsewhere, gives a wide berth to Zionism. Indeed a moral critique of
its impact on the Palestinians is ruled out.

I try to break the silence
in my ”The Bible and Colonialism” and “Zionism and the State of
Israel.” The former explores the moral question of the impact which
colonialist enterprises, fueled by the biblical paradigm, have had on
the indigenous populations in general, while the latter deals with the
impact of Zionism on the Palestinians. They are explorations into
terrain virtually devoid of inquirers, which attempt to map out some
of the contours of that terrain. They subject the land traditions of
the Bible to an evaluation which derives from general ethical
principles and criteria of human decency, such as are enshrined in
conventions of human rights and international law.

Such an enterprise is
necessary. When people are dispossessed, dispersed and humiliated, not
only with alleged divine support, but at the alleged express command
of God, one's moral self recoils in horror. Any association of God
with the destruction of people must be subjected to an ethical
analysis. The obvious contradiction between what some claim to be
God's will and ordinary civilized, decent behavior poses the question
as to whether God is a chauvinistic, nationalistic and militaristic
xenophobe. It also poses the problem of biblical prophecy finding its
fulfillment in what even unbelievers would regard as a form of
“ethnic cleansing.”

I consider that biblical
studies and theology should deal with the real conditions of people's
lives, and notsatisfy
themselves with comfortable survival in an academic or ecclesial
ghetto. I am concerned about the use of the Bible as a legitimization
for colonialism and its consequences. My academic work addresses
aspects of biblical hermeneutics, and informs a wider public onissues which have implications for human well-being, as well as
for allegiance to God.

While such a venture might
be regarded as an instructive academic contribution by any competent
scholar, to assume responsibility for doing so is for me, who has
witnessed the dispossession, dispersion and humiliation of the
Palestinians, of the order of a moral imperative. It is high time that
biblical scholars, church people, and Western intellectuals read the
biblical narratives of the promise of land “with the eyes of the
Canaanites.”9

End Notes

1Deist,
F. E., The Dangers of Deuteronomy: A Page from the Reception History
of the Book, in Martinez, F. Garcia, A. Hilhorst, J.T.A.G.M. van
Ruiten, and A.S. van der Woud (eds), “Studies in Deuteronomy. In Honour of C.J. Labuschagne
on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday,” 1994, Leiden/New York/Köln:
Brill, 13-29.

3
Davies, W.D., “The Gospel and the Land. Early Christianity and
Jewish Territorial Doctrine,” 1974, Berkeley: University of
California Press.See also his “The Territorial Dimensions of Judaism,”
1982, Berkeley: University of California Press; and his “The
Territorial Dimensions of Judaism. With a Symposium and Further
Reflections,” 1991, Minneapolis: Fortress.

9
My study of the Bible in the Land of the Bible obviously aided me in
seeing “with the eyes of the Canaanites.”Others, surely, have hadno
less interesting experiences to tell, some of which I have collected
in “They Came and They Saw.Western
Christian Experiences of the Holy Land,” Michael Prior, ed., 2000,
London: Melisende.